Tuesday, 29 April 2014

Travelling Thailand: The Andaman Coast - Ko Lanta & Ko Phi Phi

Along the Andaman Coast of Thailand, we visited Krabi Town and also stayed in Ao Nang which were both lovely seaside resorts. Apart from the beautiful sea, you could have been on any beach holiday in the world so we decided to move away from the tourist-y coast and out to the islands.

Ko Lanta
Lanta is a very chilled out Thai island, perfect if you want to escape and lie on the beach with a book for a while! We stayed in a small bamboo bungalow just set back from the beach, with a hammock on the porch (one of Josh's main requirements of our accommodation). On the beach directly in front of our bungalow were small wooden huts with open sides, perfect for relaxing in the shade but still being able to enjoy the beach. To be completely honest we didn't do a lot in Lanta, we mainly sat in the wooden huts, or on the beach, swam or read to pass the time. It was lovely and relaxing after a busy month of sightseeing and visiting temples!

Ko Phi Phi
Phi Phi is one of the more well known Thai islands, maybe for it's lively nightlife, maybe for the fact it's the setting for the film 'The Beach'. It was a lot busier than Lanta, which was empty in comparision really. Phi Phi is an amazing island, there's so much to do there! If you can get past the noise, the parties and the typical type of people that would go to a party island (I don't want to be stereotypical but there's a lot of 'lads'), then you will have an amazing time. We joined in the partying on the beach for a couple of nights, but invested in some earplugs for the others and had a great time! I strongly recommend taking a boat trip out to Phi Phi Lei, the smaller of the two Phi Phi islands which doesn't have any town or accommodation at all, which is where you will see the amazing clear waters, monkeys and scenes from The Beach. We went on a watersports experience day where we took a speedboat out and did cliff jumping (I'm too much of a wuss, so that's my friend Janie in the picture up there!), visited monkey bay where loads of monkeys live, we went to some amazing lagoons and coves, tried paddleboarding, visited the beach from the film, snorkled and saw some amazing fish (plus a shark :|), saw turtles from the boat and finally tubed and wakeboarded off the back of the speed boat! It was such a good day and I definitely recommend it, it was simply called The Watersports Adventure and can be booked from any of the tour agents in the town.

A large part of Phi Phi was destroyed in the 2004 tsunami and it's amazing to see how they've recovered from that over the last 10 years, there's still a lot of reference to the disaster in the town and the locals often speak to you about it too. I loved Phi Phi and there are places to escape from the party lifestyle, so head round to some of the quieter beaches if that's more for you.